Haunting at The Elms
Jefferson Branford, in the prime of his life one of the wealthiest men south of the Mason-Dixon Line, sat in a rocking chair on the sweeping veranda of his decaying plantation house, remembering the splendid days of the past. The Elms was once arguably the finest antebellum mansion in Louisiana, but now the house, much like its aged owner, was just another ghost of days gone by. Unlike most planters throughout the Old South, however, Branford had not suffered his reversal of fortune because of the war. Rather, his troubles began thirty years before General Beauregard fired on Fort Sumter ...
* * *
Jefferson Branford made his fortune as a young man when he took the small inheritance his seafaring father had left him and invested it in sugarcane. By the time he was thirty, Branford had already earned his first million—an incredible sum at the time James Monroe was in the White House and the number of stars on the American flag was less than half of what it is now.
As did most wealthy landowners of his day, he married a respectable young lady from a good Southern family and built her a large house on his plantation, the largest in Concordia Parish. No expense was spared on its grandeur. From the marble interior to the elaborate cast-iron railings that decorated the unusually long veranda, The Elms was a magnificent home.
After only a year of marriage, Emilia Branford gave birth to the couple's first child, a girl. Another daughter soon followed. Jefferson's disappointment in his wife's inability to provide him with a son and male heir was compounded when the doctor told him that Emilia should not risk a third pregnancy. Not wanting to endanger his wife's life, Jefferson decided abstinence was the best course.
Despite his unfortunate marital situation, Jefferson was first and foremost a gentleman in the custom of the Old South. Decorum would not permit him to divorce his wife, yet it did not prevent him from satisfying his carnal desires elsewhere. Although he preferred visiting a certain voluptuous Octoroon in New Orleans for a discrete rendezvous, his responsibilities at The Elms prevented him from making the trip on a regular basis. Consequently, he decided to take a mistress from one of the many female slaves he owned. The choice was a fairly easy one. Seventeen-year-old Jasmine was not only the most attractive of his slaves but also the fairest in complexion.
The young house servant did not find being the mistress of her white master particularly demeaning—not that she would have had any choice in the matter if she had. She was, after all, his property, and such arrangements were common on large plantations. Furthermore, Jasmine believed the close relationship with her master accorded her a higher status among her own people. There was a definite class system at The Elms. The field hands were on the lowest level, followed by the house workers and finally the skilled laborers such as Jonah, the blacksmith, and Jubal, the carpenter. As the mistress of the plantation's owner, Jasmine considered herself in a class above all the others.
Her fellow slaves soon tired of her airs of superiority and the way she avoided doing her fair share of the work around the kitchen.
"Why should I chop the vegetables?" she would ask the cook haughtily. "I have more important duties in this household."
The other slaves' low opinion of her did not bother Jasmine in the slightest. She wanted nothing to do with them anyway, preferring to curry the favor of the lady of the house since she felt a strange kinship to the unfortunate white woman. And why shouldn't she? Hadn't they both shared Master Branford's bed? Over time Jasmine also formed a deep attachment to her master's two young daughters. When not working in the kitchen, which was quite frequently, she would watch over the girls as though they were her own offspring.
Then one day it occurred to Jasmine that if she should bear a child, it would further elevate her in the social stratum of The Elms.
"I'm young and strong, massah," she proudly told Branford. "I could bear you a son, more than one perhaps."
For the first time the master of The Elms grew angry with his pretty mistress.
"Don't ever think an offspring of ours would stay on this plantation! I would never humiliate my wife or my daughters by having such a child running about the place. If you get pregnant, I'll have no choice but to sell you."
Jasmine was crushed. She had naively believed that her master felt some affection for her. Sadly, she realized that she meant nothing more to him than any of the other slaves did. From that day forward, there was a profound change in Jasmine's behavior and in the relationship between master and slave. The emotions she had once felt for Emilia Branford and her two daughters blossomed into a deeper compassion, for the master's wife had fared no better than Jasmine herself had.
The other slaves at The Elms immediately noticed the change in Jasmine's demeanor. Whereas she had once been haughty yet gay and vivacious, after the master threatened to sell her, she became silent and sullen. Jefferson also noticed Jasmine's morose manner, and in an attempt to cheer her up, he bought his paramour a beaded necklace while on a trip to New Orleans. It was not a good piece of jewelry, just a cheap trinket costing the buyer little more than pocket change, but to a slave it was a treasure. Even more importantly, to Jasmine it meant that the master did care for her as more than a just a convenient substitute for his wife.
"You do realize, of course, that you can never wear that necklace in the house," her lover cautioned. "If my dear wife were to see you wearing it, she might misunderstand, and, naturally, I don't want to upset her."
Jasmine's feeling of superiority returned. Once again, she proudly walked through the slave quarters with her head held high and with the beaded necklace glistening against her mocha-colored skin.
* * *
"Where is that gal?" the Branfords' cook asked angrily as she waited for Jasmine to finish shucking corn for the family's supper. "Get a move on, Jasmine," she called out into the back yard. "We got hungry white folks gonna be hollerin' for somethin' to eat any minute now."
A smile of self-satisfaction on her pretty face, Jasmine sashayed into the kitchen, carrying the pan of corn against her hip.
"You best get into the dining room and give the massah and his missus their soup."
Jasmine gave the cook an insolent look but kept silent and did as she was told. She picked up the porcelain soup tureen and walked into the dining room. As the slave leaned over the table to fill the family's bowls, Emilia caught a glimpse of the beaded necklace she wore.
The white woman's face first paled with shock and then turned red with embarrassment. Although Southern women—at least those born and bred in the planter aristocracy—were expected to adhere to a strict code of respectability, nearly every one of them was aware of the contemptible practice of white masters bedding their black slaves. Given her delicate condition, Emilia had always assumed her husband had a mistress on the plantation, but she never dreamed it was Jasmine. That he would parade their relationship so openly in front of her, his legal wife, was more than she could bear.
Crestfallen, Emilia stood up and announced with a strained voice, "I have a headache. I'm going upstairs to bed."
When Jefferson saw the beaded necklace on Jasmine's throat, he became livid.
"How dare you disobey me and wear that bauble in front of my wife?"
"I ... I didn't mean to, massah," the frightened slave stammered. "I was wearin' it this mornin' and musta just forgot I had it on."
Jefferson was not a forgiving man or a merciful one, for that matter. When a slave disobeyed him, he meted out severe punishment—with no exceptions. Not even taking the time to finish his supper, he dragged his sobbing mistress outside to where the slave cabins were lined up in the rear of the yard, tied her hands to a low branch of a magnolia tree, ripped her blouse to expose the tender skin on her back and administered a sound whipping.
When the beating was over, Branford, breathless from his exertions, cried, "Let this be a lesson to you. I ought to put you to work in the fields for disobeying me, but I'll give you one more chance. You can stay in the kitchen, but if you ever vex me again, you will be sorry!"
In one last display of anger, Jefferson ripped the necklace from the poor woman's throat, scattering the beads on the ground, and stomped back to the house to console his wife.
Weeping profusely, Jasmine, unmindful of the pain of her lacerated flesh and the blood that trickled down her back, held the torn remnants of her blouse against her heaving breast as she gathered up the loose beads.
* * *
Word of Jasmine's fall from grace spread quickly throughout the black population of The Elms. Her fellow house workers, who had long endured her arrogant disdain, taunted her unmercifully.
"You always thought you was too good for cookin' and cleanin'," one slave laughed. "What you gonna do when the massah send you to work in the fields?"
A second joined in, "Cheer up. Maybe he'll take pity on you and send you to Georgia to pick cotton instead!"
Through her humiliation, Jasmine continued to hold her head high and fight back her tears. The master might never trust her again, but perhaps she could convince him that she was invaluable to the household. But how? The answer came to her less than a week after her beating.
"Today be a special day in this house," the cook announced to the kitchen workers that morning. "It be Miss Sue Anne's birthday, and we're goin' to make her favorite dishes just for the occasion. You, Jasmine," the cook ordered sharply, "you can make the birthday cake."
As the forlorn slave prepared the batter for the cake, an idea came to her as to how she might cement her place in the Branford household. If the children became sick and she were able to nurse them back to health, the parents would certainly be eternally grateful to her. So, when the cook left the room, Jasmine snuck outside and picked some oleander leaves, which she then chopped up and added to the cake batter.
Once the family finished their midday meal, Jasmine proudly brought the birthday cake into the dining room and placed it in the center of the table. The two little girls clapped their hands with delight at the sight of the scrumptious dessert. Even Emilia wanted a slice. Only Jefferson refrained from eating any cake.
As Jasmine had anticipated, the little girls and their mother soon complained of headaches and abdominal pain. The slave put them right to bed and dutifully nursed them through the vomiting, the hives, and the other symptoms of oleander poisoning. The worried kitchen servant had expected her victims to be ill for only a short time and then show signs of recovery, but instead their condition rapidly worsened as the time passed.
* * *
Jasmine stared down at the dead child lying on the bed, and panic swept over her. It wouldn't be long before the doctor was called. When he examined the bodies of the mother and her two daughters, he would discover that they had been poisoned. Jasmine had no doubt that the finger of suspicion would point directly at her.
I have to get away from here, she thought with desperation.
Under cover of the gathering darkness, she crept out of the plantation house and across the back yard to the slave quarters where she hurriedly gathered her few personal belongings—a change of clothes and her precious glass beads from the broken necklace—and put them into a sack along with some food she had stolen from the kitchen. Then she headed for the woods.
It wasn't long before screams from inside the house pierced the relative peace of the night. The slaves were roused from their sleep and went running toward The Elms to see what all the commotion was about. The cook passed word of the tragedy to them: the lady of the louse and the master's two little daughters were dead.
The doctor was summoned and, as Jasmine had feared, he quickly determined that the unfortunate victims had been poisoned.
"It was probably something they ate," the doctor suggested.
"It can't be. I ate the same things they did, and I'm still alive," Branford declared.
"You're a large man; you probably did not ingest enough poison to harm you, whereas a similar size dose would fatally affect a petite woman and young children."
"But I'm not sick in the least, not even a mild case of indigestion. Besides, Doctor, I have a healthy appetite. I dare say I ate three times as much as my poor wife and children did that day. In fact, I was so full that I didn't have any room for ...."
Branford's face turned ashen.
"The cake!" he cried. "I didn't have any cake, but Emilia and the girls did."
The cook was brought into the room in tears, fitfully wringing her hands.
"What did you put in that birthday cake?" her master demanded to know.
"I didn't make the cake, massah. I was too busy preparin' the rest of the meal, so I tol' Jasmine to bake it."
At the mention of his former mistress' name, the owner of The Elms grew furious.
"Damn that girl! I just know she did this on purpose."
Jefferson marched out onto the veranda and addressed the slaves who had assembled on the front lawn.
"Where is Jasmine?" the grieving husband and father demanded to know. "Has anyone seen her?"
No one had.
"Each and every one of you is to search the place for her. I don't care if it takes all night; I want Jasmine found."
Then the master called to the white overseer, "Rafe, use the dogs; they might help you track her."
The frightened slave, trying to make her escape on foot, was no match for the overseer who hunted her down on horseback with the bloodhounds leading the way. Jasmine never even made it off The Elms' property.
When Rafe saw the pretty girl sobbing and cowering with fear before him, he felt pity for her. He might even have let her escape had not a group of house workers come up behind him and sounded the alarm. The slaves having condemned one of their own, Rafe could not afford to show mercy. He took his pistol out and fired a shot into the air, alerting his employer to the discovery ...
* * *
Jefferson Branford sat in a rocking chair on the veranda of his decaying plantation house, his eyes turned inward on the past. Time had taken its toll not only on the formerly grand house and fertile fields but also on the master of The Elms himself. His once luxuriant dark hair was now sparse and white, and his skin was wrinkled and dotted with liver spots. But it was his mind, not his body, that had suffered most from the ravages of time.
Since that tragic day in 1830, when his wife and daughters died, Branford had seen his life fall to pieces. He thought the spontaneous execution of their murderer would have eased his pain, but the image of Jasmine's body hanging from a rope tied to the branch of an elm tree haunted his dreams. Not even the war—its glorious beginning, the early victories for the South, the Confederate defeat or the devastation of Reconstruction—could rouse him from his depression. After his slaves were freed, Branford let his plantation fall to ruin.
The sun began to set; it would be dark soon. Then IT would come. The master of The Elms, his body tense, sat listening to the familiar sounds of night. Branford's hands gripped the arms of his rocking chair when he heard the soft sound of approaching footsteps, a sound that still terrified him after all these years. There was a movement at the far side of the veranda. Branford saw the plain cotton dress and the white apron. His heart pounded, and he fought back the urge to scream. As the phantom neared him, he caught a glimpse of the cheap beaded necklace she wore at her throat ...
* * *
A late model SUV pulled up in front of the bed and breakfast, and a newly married couple from New Jersey got out.
"So this is The Elms?" the husband asked.
"Yes," his wife replied. "Isn't it beautiful? What a fine example of antebellum architecture. I can just imagine a belle with a hoop skirt and voluminous petticoats walking along that veranda."
"Don't say that too loudly, sweetheart," her husband cautioned with a laugh. "Everyone will think you're another crazy Yankee who sees ghosts at every turn."
"Ghosts, indeed! What do you take me for? Such tales are for people who read the National Inquirer. I don't, for one second, believe this place is haunted. Let's bring our bags inside. I want to take a shower before dinner."
As the honeymooning couple walked up to the front door with their luggage in hand, they passed by an antique rocking chair on the veranda. The laughing newlyweds did not notice the ghost of Jefferson Branford sitting rigidly at attention, staring with horror at the approaching specter of his slave and former mistress. Thus they were not party to the drama that had been playing out nightly for more than a century and a half, for such things are visible only to those who have the ability to peer through the layers of time that separate the world of the living from that of the dead.
This story is loosely based on a reported haunting at The Myrtles Plantation, St. Francisville, LA. The picture in the upper left corner is from "Lynching of Slave Amy Spain outside Darlington, SC, Courthouse." Harper's Weekly, September 30, 1865.
Don't be silly, Salem. That was catnip in your birthday cake--not oleander!
Above picture from GreetingMania.com
